How Big is Your Rocket?
By the time you read this, Artemis 1 will be on its way back to Earth from its visit to lunar orbit. We hope for a safe splashdown near California on or about December 11. Launched aboard the world’s biggest rocket – the Space Launch System (SLS), with its 5.5 million pounds of thrust – the mission is testing humanity’s ability to put human boots back on the surface of the Moon in 2025. It’s a moment that deserves all the excitement the world is bringing to it.
SSPI’s Better Satellite World campaign joined in the excitement with this video in 2021.
Fork in the Road
It’s also a moment that marks a fascinating fork in the road for the government-commercial relationship that governs most space activity. On one path lies the SLS, which started life in 2005 as the Constellation program, meant to replace the role of the Space Shuttle in serving the International Space Station (ISS). Ballooning costs led President Obama to cancel it in 2010, but the US Congress rescued it by funding the SLS to return humans to the Moon and pave the way to Mars.
The other fork in the road – the one less traveled by so far – changes the way NASA does spaceflight. A decade ago, the agency’s leaders began creating and financing programs to be executed by private-sector companies. NASA set goals and tasked the private sector with accomplishing them safely, at an agreed price and as close to on schedule as space permits. It began with commercial cargo and crew programs to supply ISS – which were fundamental to the survival and growth of SpaceX – and is now extending to cislunar and lunar missions. SSPI put Kathryn Lueders of NASA into the Space & Satellite Hall of Fame in 2021 for her leadership along this path.
So, to paraphrase the famous words of Yogi Berra, when NASA came to a fork in the road, they took it.
Decisions on the Road
NASA and its prime contractors are famous for working to reduce risks to the absolute minimum. That costs money – a lot of it. SLS prime contractor Boeing reports that NASA has developed SLS for one-quarter of the cost of the Saturn V and half the cost of the Space Shuttle. Its running costs are less than those of the Shuttle as well. That’s a job well done. But less is relative. NASA’s auditor reports that the first four launches will cost US$4.1 billion each and that total program costs will reach $93 billion by 2025.
SpaceX designed its all-reusable, heavy-lift rocket Starship for cislunar operations, and won a contract to provide a version of the spacecraft for shuttling astronauts between lunar orbit and the surface. But Elon Musk could not resist publicly estimating Starship’s total development cost as only 5-10% of the Saturn V and its cost-per-launch as less than $10 million. The final costs and capabilities of Starship remain to be seen, but the company’s track record suggests that the private sector fork in the road will win the prize for lowest cost.
Opening the Final Frontier
Will these parallel paths meet some day? Will new and more creative business models succeed while others fail? However the future unfolds, one thing is certain. Opening the final frontier is too big and risky a challenge for business alone. Markets must develop in advance of customer demand. Space debris must be managed, which cannot happen in the absence of government regulation and enforcement, but also demands new commercial technologies for debris monitoring, avoidance maneuvering and debris removal. On the other hand, opening the final frontier has become a challenge too complex and fast-developing for government alone. It will take continuing innovation in technology and operations, where business excels, to keep making access to space cheaper, faster and more flexible.
Our future in space is the topic of our latest multi-week, multi-platform campaign, Opening the Final Frontier. With the support of Virgin Orbit, we have shared the views and experience of NSR, the Department of Homeland Security, SpaceRyde, Hogan Lovells, Momentus, the Mexican Space Agency, the Global Spaceport Alliance and the Greater Houston Partnership, among others.
In this issue of The Orbiter, we gather all the audio, video and written content of our campaign in one convenient place and add new points of view. It is a story deserving all the excitement we can muster. For the first time since 1969, when Neil Armstrong said his famous words from the Sea of Tranquility, humankind is again poised to make a giant leap. It doesn’t really matter who brings the biggest or most powerful rocket to the job. All that matters is how far it will finally take us.
